


Care and Feeding

by Rainne



Series: How Steve Rogers Got His Groove Back [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Darcy Lewis, Darcy Feels, Food, Gen, Prequel, Steve Rogers Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 08:40:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2725919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainne/pseuds/Rainne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A one-shot prequel to my fic "A Death in the Family".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Care and Feeding

**Author's Note:**

> Many of you asked for this. In celebration of the end of the semester, I have provided. It's probably a bit wangsty. Enjoy. :)

Darcy Lewis was not a woman who was easily intimidated. She was strong and independent and didn't need no man (except occasionally, to reach things on high shelves or carry heavy things). She had a degree in political science and a job working for a badass astrophysicist and one of her best friends was the Crown Prince of Asgard, also known as the Norse God of Thunder. She'd faced down Dark Elves and survived the Destroyer and even made Erik Selvig keep pants on in the lab. Darcy Lewis was a certified BAMF.

Standing on the plaza out front of Avengers Tower with her little wheeled suitcase in her hand, staring up and up and _up_ some more at the futuristic building in front of her and knowing that she was about to start sharing space with the actual _Avengers_ , Darcy Lewis had to stop and take several very deep breaths because she was _super fucking intimidated._

She calmed herself, reminded herself about her BAMF certification, and headed into the building, pulling her suitcase behind her. She strode up to the reception desk and waited politely for one of the three people there to help her. The one who approached her was a young Middle Eastern man in a quiet blue suit. He smiled. "Hi, welcome to Avengers Tower," he said. "Can I help you?"

"I'm Darcy Lewis," she said. "I'm supposed to be here. I work for Jane Foster."

He checked something on the computer in front of him and then gave her another smile. "I have you on the list, Miss Lewis," he said. He picked up a small faux-leather folder and stepped out from behind the desk. "Follow me, please." He led her to the back of the lobby, past the wide bank of elevators, to a single elevator that was tucked back in a corner. "This is the only elevator that goes past the eightieth floor." He handed her the folder. "Your credentials are here. If you'll swipe your ID card here, please?" He indicated the card reader.

She pulled the card out of the folder, swiped it, and then tucked it back in. The black panel on the wall next to the card reader lit up with a picture of a handprint, and Darcy, with a glance at the young man to make sure she was doing the right thing, pressed her hand to the panel. It hummed under her hand for just a second, and then a tiny round spot irised open above it. She blinked at it. "Retinal scan?"

"Mr. Stark takes top-floor security very seriously," he replied.

"Hm." Darcy leaned forward and allowed her retina to be scanned.

"You need to keep your ID card on you at all times," the young man added.

Darcy nodded. The young man said, "The elevator is voice-activated, so just tell it where you need to go and it'll get you there."

"Where _am_ I going?" Darcy asked.

"Oh!" The young man flushed slightly. "Sorry. Dr. Foster's lab is on seventy-nine."

"Thanks," Darcy said with a smile. He smiled back, then turned and headed back to the reception desk. Darcy turned back to the elevator and waited. After a moment, the doors slid open and she stepped in, pulling her suitcase behind her. The doors slid shut again and Darcy, after looking around for a speaker, finally just spoke to the air. "Um. Seventy-nine? ...Please?"

"Certainly, Miss Lewis," a smooth-as-fuck English voice replied, and the elevator began to rise.

Darcy started slightly at the sound. "Hello?"

"My apologies for startling you," the voice replied. "I am JARVIS. I control all of the tower's internal systems."

"Oh," Darcy said. "So you're... a voice-address system?"

"Of a sort," JARVIS replied. "Technically speaking, I am an artificial intelligence."

"Oh, that's  _cool,_ " Darcy replied, her face splitting in a broad grin. 

"Thank you," JARVIS said. The elevator slowed to a halt, and the doors slid open. "When you are ready to see your rooms, Miss Lewis, please return to the elevator and I will be happy to convey you."

"Thank you, JARVIS," Darcy said, stepping out into the hallway. She looked back and forth, and then said, "Hey, JARVIS?"

"Yes, Miss Lewis?"

"Which way is Jane's lab?"

"Dr. Foster's lab is to your left."

"Thanks again."

"You're quite welcome."

Jane was in her lab, fortunately; when Darcy entered, she was putting together one of her homemade pieces of equipment. She paused to give Darcy a quick hug of welcome and say, "Go get settled in; make sure all your stuff got here. I'm pretty sure they lost at least one of my boxes in transit and I want to have a full inventory when I get in touch with them."

"Okay." Darcy paused. "Janey, are we actually living in Avengers Tower?"

"Of course we are," Jane replied, blinking at her. "Where else would we live?"

"Well, you, sure," Darcy pointed out. "You're boning Thor. But me? I kind of figured I'd end up in a closet on Staten Island or something."

"Don't be ridiculous; Staten Island is way too expensive for you." Jane grinned. "You'd end up in Jersey City."

Darcy gave a full-body shudder. "Don't even  _joke_ about that." She left again, heading back to the elevator. "I'll be back later."

"Okay." Jane went back to assembling, and Darcy went back to the elevator.

~*~

Jane decided unilaterally that they should take the rest of the week off - it was Thursday, after all, so there was no reason why they couldn't take a few days to rest and recuperate from the travel and the moving and get a fresh start on Monday. Darcy figured it wasn't a coincidence that Thor was in New York, but didn't argue. 

Meeting the Avengers was a heady thing, but Darcy reminded herself firmly that she was, in fact, a certified BAMF, and she managed to get through the five-minute ordeal without embarrassing herself. In fact, if she did say so herself, she felt like she'd managed to be remarkably normal to all of them. It helped that Thor was there introducing her, and really, after Thor, the rest of them were just not that impressive. What they were was distant and edgy, especially around each other, and - at least in the case of Captain "Steve, please" America - sort of sad. Darcy felt her instincts kick in.

She called her Granny that night, and spent several hours on the phone with her, painstakingly taking down recipe after recipe onto index cards. She sorted them carefully, double checked with JARVIS to make sure she wouldn't be stepping on anyone's toes and to find out if anyone had special dietary requirements, and went out the next day for groceries. There was a green market at Rockefeller Center and a boutique butcher in between, and she came back loaded down with fresh veggies and meat. 

A little before five o'clock, with the communal kitchen full of the smell of chicken and dumplings, she asked JARVIS to alert the Tower's residents that dinner would be served at six. She half-expected most of them to beg off, simply because they hadn't really seemed like the socializing type, but she underestimated the power of simple curiosity. Around ten minutes to six, Pepper and Tony entered the room.

"Okay, something smells  _delicious,_ " Pepper said.

"Chicken and dumplings," Darcy replied, checking a pot on the stove. 

"You cook, Lewis?" Clint asked, coming in from the other direction with Natasha right behind him.

"No, I conjured it up with a magic spell," Darcy replied, her expression earnestly serious. " _Accio_ deliciousness!"

Bruce, who was coming up the stairs, laughed softly. "It smells fantastic."

"Thank you," Darcy replied. She pulled a large serving dish out of a cabinet and set it on the counter, then took the green beans off the stove and poured them into the colander in the sink. After a moment to let them drain - during which Thor and Jane arrived - she dumped them into the serving dish, which she handed off to Jane, who carried them to the table.

Steve arrived last, coming in through the kitchen, and Darcy handed him the serving dish of mashed potatoes as he passed. "On the table please and thanks!" she sang out, darting back across the kitchen to the stove.

"Sure," he said after a moment of staring dumbly at the large bowl in his hands.

"Need help with anything, Darce?" Jane asked.

"Nnnn.... Nope!" Darcy replied, poking at the wide, squat stewpot on the stove. "Okay, guys, here comes. It ain't gonna be fancy but I guarantee it's gonna be good!" She grabbed the pot's handles with potholders and carried it out to the table, hooking the last empty chair (between Thor and Pepper) and pulling it out of the way, and setting the pot on the large ceramic trivet she'd placed in the middle of the table. Then she took up the ladle that was inside the pot. "Bowls, please!"

There was a bowl and a plate at every place setting; she took each person's bowl and ladled them full of chicken and dumplings, filling her own bowl last, and then she sat down. "Well?" she said, looking around the table with raised eyebrows. "Dig in!"

There was a long moment of silence as everyone took that first tentative taste, and then a chorus of "This is delicious!" and similar sentiments, followed by the kind of silence that every cook loves to hear - the one where nobody is talking because their mouths are too full. Satisfied with herself, Darcy attended to her own plate, and plotted the next meal she was going to make.

~*~

She found the cookbook that weekend at Strand. She was perusing the cooking section and happened upon it, and after flipping through it for a moment, she knew she had to have it. It was perfect, and maybe it would put a little light back in a certain super-soldier's eyes. 

The next day, the super-soldier in question followed his nose into the kitchen and said, "Are you cooking something?"

She was standing at the sink, not really looking in his direction, and she didn't respond, so he moved to the side a little bit to catch her eye. When she saw him, she pulled her headphones out of her ears. "Hey, Steve, what's up?"

"I was just wondering if you were cooking something," he repeated. "It smells delicious in here."

"I am, actually," she said. She reached over and clicked on the light inside one of the ovens, and Steve took in the sight of a bundt pan sitting on the rack. "It's a spice cake."

"Spice cake?" he said, blinking back surprise. "My Ma used to make spice cake."

Darcy nodded. "I got a recipe book at Strand a couple days ago - it's a big bookstore over at Broadway and Twelfth. Anyway,  it was all these really old recipes. This one's a spice cake from the Great Depression, and it has no milk or eggs or butter in it. And I thought, well, that's a win because, one, dairy free, and two, maybe it would be something you'd had before, or, you know, similar. Plus, three, everyone likes cake. And if they don't, they're wrong."

He swallowed hard. "Well," he managed. "That was... that was nice of you."

She patted his arm. "Anytime, Steve," she said. 

The spice cake was a big hit - with everyone except Steve, who didn't show up for dinner that night. Darcy felt her brow furrow in confusion when she looked over at his empty place, but nobody else seemed to think it was out of the ordinary, so she didn't say anything. Instead, she carefully wrapped up a piece of the cake and put it aside, with a note that had his name on it. It sat on the kitchen counter for about three days before Clint finally succumbed to the temptation.

~*~

A couple of weeks later, after a variety of more modern dishes, Darcy tried out a pork chop stew from the Depression-era cookbook. This time, she didn't tell anyone where she'd gotten the recipe, and Steve showed up along with everyone else and ate appreciatively. Darcy made a mental note not to mention the source of those recipes from now on; clearly, Steve didn't want to be reminded. If she thought that was odd, well, it wasn't her business, was it?

She was settling in nicely, she thought; she and Barton and Tony had made friends quickly, bonding over their shared love of snark and action movies; she and Bruce were getting along very well in the labs (she'd finally convinced him to let her organize him, and his lab was not only more productive but now less likely to lose toxic chemical samples). She and Pepper were tentatively finding common ground; their backgrounds were drastically different, but they both had a secret love for  _RuPaul's Drag Race_ that they indulged with shared shame and popcorn. She was even getting along with Natasha, though she wasn't sure if that was because Natasha liked to toy with her prey before pouncing or because Natasha had adopted her as a sort of pet. Either way, it was kind of fun. 

The only person in the tower that she couldn't seem to make friends with, no matter how hard she tried, was Steve. He was unfailingly polite, but equally unfailingly icily distant. He consistently refused all invitations to take part in field trips to museums or outdoor events, rejected any attempt to interest him in shared television or movie watching nights, and disdained any efforts that even looked like they might have been undertaken on his behalf, such as meals or desserts prepared with him in mind. If Darcy happened to mention that a particular recipe had come from the Depression cookbook, he missed dinner; the one night she sneaked mock-apple pie onto the table without warning him ahead of time, he took one bite, shot her a dirty look across the table and excused himself.

Darcy put away the Depression cookbook, reminded herself that she was a certified BAMF, and focused on cooking only modern recipes.

Unfortunately, it was too late. As though that pie had been the opening salvo in some kind of battle, Steve's thin veneer of politeness fell away. He stopped showing up for communal dinners, or he made a point of wandering through, grabbing a prepackaged snack out of the refrigerator, and wandering out again. He started rolling his eyes at her when he thought she couldn't see - and then she realized that he knew damn well that she  _could_ see.

Darcy reminded herself that she was a certified BAMF, and started avoiding him when possible. She reduced the number of times per week that she cooked communal meals, and she started spending more time in her apartment.

And then the Doombots happened.

~*~

She came out of the yarn shop and stopped in her tracks, staring at the huge bots that were stomping up the street.  _What the actual hell,_ she thought crazily.  _Where are the Fantastic freaking Four when you need them? Isn't Doom their bad guy?_

And then she heard the distinctive sound of repulsor fire, the roar of the Hulk, and the clang of Captain America's shield, and she knew the Avengers were on the scene. She almost sagged with relief - and then she saw the kid. 

He couldn't have been more than six, and he was standing on the sidewalk, staring in terror at one of the Doombots. It was reaching for him.

_Oh, no._

She reacted on pure instinct. She grabbed a rock off the ground and raced forward, throwing herself between the kid and the Doombot, and she threw that rock into the Doombot's face as hard as she could. A moment later, she found herself lifted several feet into the air, held tightly in the Doombot's claw.  _Oh, shit,_ she thought.  _If I get outta this alive, that is really gonna bruise._

"Hey!" someone shouted, and Darcy realized with dawning horror that she knew that voice. The Doombot turned, and Darcy caught a glimpse of red, white, and blue just before the Doombot drew back and backhanded Steve in the ribs with its other claw. Steve went flying, but bounced back onto his feet almost immediately and threw the shield in a perfect arc. It swiped right between the bot's head and shoulders, taking the thing's head with it when it went, and the bot's body sagged to the ground, finally releasing Darcy from its grip.

Steve pointed a finger at a nearby stoop. "Get up there," he ordered, "and  _do not move._ "

Darcy scrambled to obey.

Once the rest of the bots were taken care of, he stalked over to where she was and grabbed her by the upper arm. "Let's go," he snapped. 

They weren't that far from the tower - only four short blocks - but by the time they made it back there, Darcy had heard chapter and verse - twice - about getting out of the way of attacks when they came, and not putting herself in danger, and not being stupid and seeking attention, and not acting like a child and trying to jump into situations that she clearly couldn't handle on her own, and when he let her go, she turned away from him and ran across the lobby, hoping to God that she could get into the elevator before she started crying. She hadn't had a tongue-lashing like that since the last time her Aunt Nora decided to run down everything that was ever wrong with her, starting with the fact that she was adopted.

Late that afternoon, Clint came by to check on her. "I was out there," he said. "You okay?"

She nodded. Then, impulsively, she said, "Why's he hate me so much?"

Clint, to his credit, did not pretend not to know what she was talking about. "I dunno," he admitted. He paused, then said, "I... guess I could find out."

So she followed him down to the gym and stood outside the door and listened while Clint asked Steve what it was about Darcy that ground his gears so badly. And Steve said, " She's loud and annoying and she's always in the middle of everything, and then she goes and gets herself kidnapped like an idiot. So far, I haven't really seen any reason why she shouldn't get on my nerves.”

Darcy took off before Clint could come back out of the gym again. She went straight back to her apartment, curled up on her bed, and closed her eyes, fighting back the tears. It was a ridiculous thing to cry over.  So what if Steve Rogers didn't like her? So what if Captain freaking America, the bastion of all that was good and pure in the world, thought she was annoying? Who cared? Not Darcy. She was a certified BAMF, and she damn well knew it.

Of course, the problem was this: if the rest of the team figured out how much Steve didn't like her, she was going to be asked to leave. Oh, they'd be nice about it, because they  _did_ like her, and Pepper might even help her find an apartment elsewhere in the city, but they would still ask her to leave, because Steve Rogers was the team leader and Captain  _freaking_ America, and who was she? She was nothing. She was just that girl Jane dragged along behind her from New Mexico who'd been given a place out of pity because nobody knew quite what to do with her.  _Probably_ she wouldn't lose her job, because Steve rarely came down to the science floors, but she would certainly lose her access to the upper floors, and the chance that any of the Avengers would care enough about her to remain friends when she was gone was very slim.

So Darcy firmly reminded herself that she was one hundred percent grade-A corn-fed BAMF, and she closed herself up in her apartment. She checked with JARVIS before leaving in the morning to make sure that Steve wasn't around, and she checked again before going back in the evening. She stopped cooking communal meals, and she stopped coming out to watch television with others. In fact, she stopped doing anything outside of her apartment unless it involved either working in the labs or actually leaving the tower.

Jane started giving her careful looks, but didn't say anything.

Darcy reminded herself regularly that she was a certified BAMF. It didn't help.

~*~

Thor and Jane went to Asgard for a week. On the second night that they were gone, Darcy got a phone call from her Aunt Nora.

When the call ended, she sat numbly on her couch for about half an hour, holding a picture frame in her hands, before she wandered out of the apartment and up to the kitchen level for the first time in several weeks. She curled herself up on the couch in her pajama pants and her oversized hoodie, and clutched the frame to her chest. And then she stared off into space, quietly hoping that maybe somebody would come through the room who liked her.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [(podfic) Care and Feeding](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3941791) by [secondalto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/secondalto/pseuds/secondalto)




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